Reptilia · Testudines
Pelomedusa subrufaBonnaterre, 1789
Marsh terrapin
Photograph by Ryan van Huyssteen, CC BY, via iNaturalist
A water-living, day-active, meat-eating turtle from the Afrotropic region, reaching 33 cm across the shell.
Also called Helmeted Turtle.
Reptilia › Testudines › Pelomedusidae › Pelomedusa
- Grows to
- 330mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Diurnal
- Lives up to
- 20.1years
Longer than 78% of all species in Pelomedusidae anyone has measured.
The bar is the rank itself: its length is the share of the family this animal exceeds. The chart below is the family’s real spread, on a logarithmic scale because body length here runs from 120 to 550 mm. The solid rule is this animal. Every bar is a count of real species, and nothing on this figure is estimated.
What is known
30 sourced facts, each taken from a named scientific dataset. How to read these.
Cited from a dataset unless a row is marked otherwise.
The animal itself
- Colour on the back
- Black, Brown
- Pattern on the back
- Uniform
- Pupil
- Round
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- None
- Longest recorded life
- 20.1years
- Body temperature when active · measured in the wild
- 37°C99 °F
mean body temperature of active individuals in nature
Size
- Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- 330mm13 in
- Shell length, front to back · greatest recorded
- 325mm13 in
- Largest juvenile · shell length
- 30mm1.25 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 3737g8.2 lb
- Body mass · a typical adult
- 2273g5 lb
- Body mass at hatching
- 12.38g0.44 oz
total length, tail included — Colston, Kulkarni, Jetz, and Pyron, 2020, BMC Evol. Biol., 20:81
straight carapace length, measured in a line rather than over the curve
largely converted from length by allometry in the source
AnAge rates this record "acceptable"
How it lives
- Diet
- Carnivorous
- How it hunts
- Active foraging
- Active
- Diurnal
- Where it lives
- Aquatic
- Habitat
- Forest, Wetlands
- Region
- Afrotropic
- Highest it lives · above sea level
- 1175m
Amphibians, invertebrates
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Sex decided by
- Temperature
- Average clutch
- 5eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 2–10eggs
- Egg length
- 18mm0.7 in
- Egg width
- 17mm0.7 in
Naming and history
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Bonnaterre
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1789
Keeping one
No enclosure size is given here
The standard sets enclosure size for turtles and tortoises genus by genus, and this genus is not among the roughly sixty it lists. No figure is given rather than one borrowed from a different animal.
Active animals measured in the wild averaged 99 °F (37 °C).
Mean body temperature of active individuals measured in nature. A measurement of the animal, not a setting for a thermostat.
Feeding
A prey item should be no wider than the space between the animal's eyes.
Widely used across reptile husbandry references. The stated reason is that the gap approximates the width of the throat, so wider prey is associated with impaction. This is established practice, not a measurement.
294kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 3,737 g, the heaviest recorded for Marsh terrapin — so it is the top of the range, not a figure for a particular animal. Weigh yours and the number will be lower.
An upper estimate, not a feeding target, and not veterinary advice. The equation covers only what an animal burns staying alive, so a growing, gravid or recovering animal needs more — and it was measured on wild animals, which move far more than one in an enclosure. Body condition and a vet who knows the species are what a feeding decision should rest on. Where this comes from.
What nobody knows
These are not gaps in our research. No scientific dataset records them for this species — and saying so is information you cannot get from a reference that simply leaves a field out.
- — Still living
- — Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- — Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- — Length snout to vent · adult male mean
- — Length snout to vent · adult mean
- — Female length · mean, nose to tail
- — Length nose to tail · adult male mean
- — Length nose to tail · adult mean
- — Largest female · snout to vent
- — Largest male · snout to vent
- — Largest female · shell length
- — Largest male · shell length
- — Hatchling length · snout to vent
- — Hatchling length · nose to tail
- — Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- — Body mass · adult female, mean
- — Preferred body temperature · chosen in a laboratory gradient
- — Eats arthropods
- — Eats vertebrates
- — Eats plant matter
- — How the young develop
- — Gestation or incubation
- — Mean clutch · smallest reported
- — Mean clutch · largest reported
- — Clutches in a year
- — Clutches a year · fewest
- — Clutches a year · most
- — First breeds from · youngest recorded
- — First breeds by · oldest recorded
- — Hatchling length · smallest recorded
- — Hatchling length · largest recorded
- — Age at first breeding · female
- — Mature from · youngest recorded
- — Mature by · oldest recorded
- — Size at maturity · smallest recorded
- — Size at maturity · largest recorded
- — Body temp in the wild · lowest mean recorded
- — Body temp in the wild · highest mean recorded
- — Limbs
- — Conservation status
- — Status assessed · the year the Red List last looked
- — Population trend
- — Red List criteria
- — Biome
- — Active season · shortest recorded
- — Active season · longest recorded
- — Density · lowest recorded
- — Density · highest recorded
- — Home range · largest recorded
- — Suborder
- — Infraorder
- — Type locality
- — Active in
- — Mainland or island
- — Lowest it lives · above sea level
- — Range size
Others in Pelomedusidae
Take this data
Everything on this page is available as data under CC BY 4.0 — use it freely, credit it, no permission needed.
This species as JSON · the whole dataset
Cite this page
The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia (2026). Pelomedusa subrufa. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/pelomedusa-subrufa
@misc{pelomedusa_subrufa_2026,
title = {Pelomedusa subrufa},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/pelomedusa-subrufa}
}Sources
- Moura, M. R. et al. TetrapodTraits: a database of 33,281 tetrapod species. Used under CC BY 4.0. Observed values only; this encyclopedia does not publish its imputed predictions.
- Oskyrko, O. et al. (2024). ReptTraits: a comprehensive dataset of ecological traits in reptiles. Scientific Data. Used under CC BY 4.0.
- Catalogue of Life (dataset 3LR), used under CC BY.
- AnAge, Human Ageing Genomic Resources (de Magalhães et al.), used under CC BY 3.0.